by LaCount Anderson

Created on: August 19, 2008

Throw-Away People

"You have got to be kidding?" I said to my wife when she told me that Cindy and Ruth Ann had decided to get married.

"We are invited to participate with Cindy's family at the wedding and they want us to attend in Boston this June" she said.

My mind went back to our days in seminary when all three of us were friends. I thought about how a few years later Cindy told my wife about her intentions to "come out of the closet." We were not nice to Cindy. From time to time as we began to mature in our faith, we would talk about our actions and now, years later, regretted those actions toward her. However, we never made any attempt to reconcile with Cindy. Our relationship had reached a different level and surprisingly was a cordial one. It was more one sided than we would admit but we stayed in contact through Christmas cards, Cindy's visits and calls, and amazingly, after 25 years, she wanted us to attend her wedding and participate with her family.

We both decided that one of the ways we could heal the relationship would be to travel to Boston and attend the wedding. We said some things back then that were not kind, and certainly as we reflected upon them, not how Christ would have handled the situation. The more we thought about our actions, the sorrier we were that as ministers of the Gospel we had not done as Jesus would have desired. Maybe attending the wedding would help us get back on track with a more mature friendship than before.

We made the journey to Boston last summer and it was awkward for me in particular. I was one of just a few men at the wedding and probably the only Baptist minister in the group. Something happened as we sat and talked to different girls who would venture to our table to inquire about who we were. We began to hear a theme, sadly, from each person. Each person would tell us a tragic story about how family and church family had rejected them. Stories of mothers and fathers disowning children. Churches voting or casting members away. Jobs being lost due to sexual orientation. People throwing away other people! Somehow in this setting I began to see a sad reality. I began to remember Jesus asking "which sin is greater?" Another truth I had learned is to "love your neighbor as yourself." When I matched these verses to actions I had taken and was hearing from the wedding participants, something seemed a bit wrong with my Christianity.

I had never been around many gay people in my life and must confess I had never put a

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